If you’re a Silent Hill fan like myself, it’s been a long time between drinks.
You would have been besides yourself a year ago when the Silent Hill Transmission seemingly came out of nowhere, announcing a bunch of new games. Not least a remake of the excellent Silent Hill 2 and a new feature film.
Among all this was one title that I wasn’t exactly sure about.
Silent Hill: Ascension was billed as an immersive experience, where players could choose the fates of characters in a new Silent Hill story. I immediately thought it might be like a Telltale game, where you’re basically playing a movie and making key decisions along the way that ultimately alter the outcome of the narrative.
I couldn’t really get my head around it.
The reason being, something like this has never been done before.
Ascension is basically a TV show based in the Silent Hill universe, animated in complete CGI, that fans can tune into at a regular basis, whether it be live or on demand. At certain beats in the story, the Ascension community as a whole must make a decision as to what a characterS will do next.
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For example, the opening scene has two women performing some sort of ritual when things go horribly wrong. You are then given no less than 24 hours before you can contribute, by selecting a prompt from three choices.
The outcome of these choices then becomes set in Silent Hill canon, and cannot be changed in the future.
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To participate, all you need to do is download the Silent Hill: Ascension app or hit the website.
I am intrigued by this take on the Silent Hill franchise, but I’m not really sure how it’s going to go.
Would I have preferred it just be a new Silent Hill game? Yes. But as a fan, I’ll take anything I can get right now.
I did tune in live for the first ‘screening’. The story does have my attention, but I did have to turn the live chat off, as there was so many people on there and it was a complete mess.
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I’m interested to see how these canonical decisions will impact any further titles that are set to be released. That could make for some truly innovative storytelling.
Only time will tell.
I’ll see you in Silent Hill.
